Swan Song

I’ve earned legitimacy as environmental journalist: I got a press release from Marc Morano, research lackey of Climate-Denier-in-Chief James Inhofe, (sadly) the ranking Republican member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.

The release claims that there were more scientists dissenting about climate science than authored the 2007 UN IPCC report that asserted that it was 90 percent certain that manmade climate change was occurring and would be a major, major problem if not controlled.

As usual, Morano’s facts are misleading. The IPCC report had 450 lead authors. However, it had 800 contributing authors and drew on the work of 2500 scientists asked to contribute because of their expertise in climatology—the study of large-scale and long-term trends in weather and their causes.

There were 650 dissenting “scientists,” according to the press release. However, their areas of expertise including geology, physics, paleontology and meteorology—the study of short-term weather patterns.

The main substance of the release is “there’s more of us than there are of you,” for which it relies on misrepresented data. Now, if you were a minority who genuinely believed a majority theory was flawed in its methodology, wouldn’t you be more honest in your own methods? The release also claims that the IPCC ignores solar variation as a cause of climate change. This is alsofalse.

The obscure location of this press release on the committee’s website is well deserved. Inhofe and Morano are endangered species.